Of course it's nothing like that these days. The physical
challenges of life in Antarctica have been reduced by
technology and experience. The social and personal challenges
remain. Some of these first presented themselves during the two
months sailing to Halley, others lurked until the depths of
winter.

I kept a diary right from when we sailed from Grimsby in
1997 until we reached the Falklands in March 2000. The rest of
this section is mostly taken from my diary, which was largely
written for my family and was sent back in weekly
instalments.

The only problem is that I've never got round to converting the diary
into a readable form. Sorry about that, you can look at the
pictures instead.

Where is Halley?

As you can see from the map Halley isn't actually on land
but on a floating ice shelf. The shelf is constantly moving so
the exact position changes from day to day.

Why?

This is a question I didn't ask myself for a while, just
letting myself be carried along in the excitement and adventure
of preparing to leave the world for two years. One simple and
obvious reason was to avoid the responsibility of a "real" job,
a sort of Peter Pan reflex.

In the end I think it was just a matter of trusting my
instincts. It felt like the right thing to do at the time,
looking back on it I'd say it was.